Saturday, December 30, 2006

I saw on TV this morning that Saddam Hussein's Hanging was video taped. How long until the Saddam Hanging Video appears on You Tube? Maybe they are on vigilant watch for it so they can delete it when it appears. That's an opportunity for all those You Tube wannabe sites out there. Exclusive Saddam Execution...

I am actually anti-capital punishment, but not really for the reasons you'd think. It's just too expensive to kill someone because of this litigious environment in which we live. It costs more than ten times as much to put someone to death than it does to keep them alive in prison for the rest of their lives. If it were double maybe it would be worth it for revenge reasons. Deterrence is a myth. If you add to that the rate of failure and the obvious racial bias in the application of capital punishment, it adds up to a pretty easy conclusion for me.

I guess I understand why people feel Saddam had to be put to death. (That sounds better than "killed" but worse than "put to sleep.") I mean, you're not exactly going to prevent someone from becoming a brutal dictator because they are frightened of the death penalty, but in the case of a national leader who might someday return to power should the right combination of events occur, this certainly is the only sure-fire way to prevent that from happening.

The UIGEA changed everything for Online Poker Players. There are a million different stories and interpretations about what the UIGEA means to US players. It's important to know where you stand with Online Gaming Sites and Online Money Deposit Sites.

CompatiblePoker.com's Poker Site for the USA compiles all the information available that US players need to know about the legal status of Online Poker in the USA. The site maintains a list of sites that remain open to US customers as well as a listing of the sites that have closed to the US. If you need to know where to go after your favorite poker site closed, you can find all your options here.

CompatiblePoker.com also maintains an updated list of methods for depositing funds from US players and the official announcements from those resources. There is also a countdown timer for the 270 day grace period that banks have to comply with the UIGEA.

While the site concentrates on poker sites, there is also information on the site for players in the US who are interested in Casino Gambling and Online Sports Betting.

The site has an "Archived Hourly Updates" section containing all the latest happenings in the world of online gaming, and a US Gambling Law FAQ that answers a lot of questions about how the UIGEA and state laws could affect you.

To keep yourself informed and up to date on the latest legal happenings in the Online Gaming world, check out Poker Site for the USA.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Now that I've moved away from legal casino poker, I'm interested in getting a home game going again. For my poker supplies, I'm turning to CardroomSupply.com. Why? I want the highest quality poker supplies to impress my new poker friends here in Tennessee. Plus I hate paying for shipping, and CardroomSupply.com has free shipping on all orders over $100.

This is especially important on most of their high end equipment, like this gorgeous Solid Oak Poker Table I am considering. It's also available in a Mahogany, Cherry and Ebony finishes, and the felt is available in numerous colors such as traditional green, blue, burgundy, black velveteen or cloth. Customized upholstery is also available.

It's also very handy that poker chips are available in sets or as individual chips so you can customize your own set. My favorite playing cards, Jumbo Style by Copag, are available, as well as Queen and Derby brand cards. One item I particularly like is the dealer button with the built in tournament timer. Cool and useful!

One way of measuring the greatness of an entertainer is by how many nicknames he generates. James Brown has been called "The Godfather of Soul" and "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business," but my favorite is "Soul Brother Number One."

He had such a profound impact on soul music that he spawned his own genre of R&B, called funk. He had more than a dozen top 10 R&B records before funk was co-opted and perverted into "disco."

Brown continued working hard and made a comeback in the 80's before being derailed by drugs and spousal abuse issues, once landing him a 6 year sentence in prison, of which he served two and a half years.

I compiled a list of all the movies I watched on DVD this year (including TV Series) and ranked them into five categories. This is all the movies I WATCHED this year, not just movies that came out this year. It's obviously not my first viewing for many of these films, but I did watch them this year. There can be only one best, so that category 1 is Best Movie of the year. Without further ado...

Best Movie of the Year

Clerks 2

Other Good Movies

Amazon Women on the Moon An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening HarderBaadasssss!Blade Runner Cinderella Man Clerks: First Cut (Not Theatrical Version) Donnie Darko: Director's Cut Firefly: Disc 1 (4-Disc Series) Four Brothers Glory Road Good Night, and Good Luck Greg the Bunny: (2-Disc Series) Lord of War Red Dwarf: Series 8 (3-Disc Series) SerenitySin City Thank You for Smoking The 40-Year-Old Virgin The Adventures of Baron Munchausen The Great Raid The Ice Harvest Triumph of the Nerds Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Wedding Crashers X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Movies Worth Watching

16 Blocks Aeon Flux BarnyardCars Click D.O.A. Desperado El Mariachi Flightplan Fun with Dick and Jane King Kong Lucky Number Slevin Madagascar Monster House Munich Must Love Dogs Once Upon a Time in Mexico Over the Hedge Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Proof of Life Solaris Spy Game The Aristocrats The Brothers Grimm The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe The Da Vinci Code The Family Stone The Greatest Game Ever Played The Island The Producers The Weather Man Two for the Money Ultraviolet Virtuosity Waiting... Zathura

I Want Two Hours of My Life Back

Thursday, December 21, 2006

It's always easy to find the craps table in a busy casino, it's the one with all the people yelling and celebrating around it. One of the more popular posts I've written on this blog is an instructional article on Craps for some folks heading for Vegas who wanted to know more about the game. It's understandable as the craps table in a casino is obviously one of the more exciting experiences.

There's a good reason for the excitement surrounding craps tables. Gamblers know that craps offers some of the best bets in the casino, and you can turn a small investment into a large windfall if you bet correctly and get some lucky rolls.

CrapsHero.com is a site dedicated to learning to avoid the bad bets on a craps table to maximize your opportunity to win big. There are many crazy and confusing bets in craps, and the site can guide you to some of the ways to avoid giving too much advantage to the house.

Southern Comfort was created by an Irish immigrant named Martin Wilkes Heron who came to the states in 1870 and worked at a saloon in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Blending the flavors of peach, orange, vanilla and cinnamon he came up with Southern Comfort in 1874 as an alternative to the harsh whiskeys of Mississippi and Kentucky.

Southern Comfort was first bottled in Memphis Tennessee in 1889, selling for the very high (at the time) price of $2.50 per bottle. By the turn of the century there were countless imitations of Southern Comfort, but the secret recipe was carefully guarded. In 1904 the distillery was moved to Missouri for the World's Fair in Saint Louis where it won the gold medal alongside Jack Daniels Sour Mash Whiskey.

Although the distilleries of Southern Comfort were halted during prohibition in the 1920s, the guarded recipe resumed production after the eighteenth amendment was repealed in 1933. Even today only ten people know the recipe to Southern Comfort, which is available in 60 countries worldwide and bottles 2.2 million cases of the drink per year.

While the liqueur is distilled and bottled in Saint Louis, Mo. it still remembers its roots in New Orleans and has set up the Southern Comfort Music Fund to help New Orleans Musicians get back on their feet after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Today was such a beautiful day. The temperature got above 70 degrees here in Middle Tennessee and I took the opportunity to stain my deck. It was simple mindless work, and I got to consider what was going on in the world.

It was just such a warm wonderful day where you get the feeling that nothing horrible ever happens in the world and if something unfortunate happens you will never be held personally responsible for it.

Such a nice warm wonderful place this world is. I'm so glad I get the pleasure of living in it. I hope I never wake up.

Mr. Craig doesn't use anyone's name. He is not intentionally trying to humiliate anyone. I don't even know who he is talking about. I didn't really care who it was until all these bloggers started attacking Michael about it. Now I'm curious who all these bloggers feel so protective about. She must be hot.

Let's face it. One person got so drunk she was actually discovered by paramedics passed out in the bathroom. Another surrendered her battle with sobriety so she could "drink with the bloggers." If you see that and just laugh it off without being concerned, I'm worried your humanity.

It is a well known fact that many people attend these blogger events for the sole purpose of drinking with friends. Some fully intend to drink to EXCESS. That's a scary thought. It's been said several times that if you are a gambler and you don't think about addiction, you are a fool. If you're a drinker, I think the same is true.

While I'm no tea totaler, I'm also not a very big drinker. I honestly think I am a bit too careful about alcohol, but I'd rather err on the side of caution.

But some of the drinking that goes along with the blogger events is EXTREME. It can make me feel uncomfortable reading about it. I totally understand Michael's unease in actually witnessing it.

Nobody is blaming bloggers for what a few people do when they're impaired. But bloggers definitely encourage people to drink, and I think that is something to be very careful with. Bloggers tend to glorify excessive drinking. A lot of it is creative license. But in reality, that's a very scary subject.

Craig is absolutely not making fun of anyone. He's showing concern about a serious issue. And if you try to get serious when bloggers are trying to have fun, get ready to be attacked.

There would be more guarantees for your money if you had better AV protection or didn't download pr0n and warez that are infected with keyloggers. I'm not sure why the risk that you might download a keylogger should be shifted to FTP.

They gave you the hand histories and the IP address. What more should they do?

You also don't address the fact that, as far as FTP is concerned, you could be trying to defraud them. How does Full Tilt know that you didn't ask a friend to login to your account from a different site and dump your chips?

Thanks F-Train, I was waiting for someone to make this argument.

#1 - FTP is convinced that chip dumping DID NOT occur. So how could I be defrauding them? If chip dumping did occur, they would take the money from the recipient and give it back to me. Where's the profit in that?

That suspicion goes both ways, doesn't it? What's to prevent FTP from taking my money, doctoring some hand histories and making up an IP? Absoultely nothing. I have no way to verify that those hands actually occurred. I don't think this, but I don't have a good argument to convince a more paranoid person that it's not the case.

#2 - It's the assumption that I have a keylogger or spyware on my computer that bothers me. What if I didn't? My Anti-Virus protection is up to date. I've run every scanner I could download, even paying for some so I could find out if my system had been infected. Other than tracking cookies, they have found absolutely nothing. This is a brand new laptop install with basically nothing but OS and poker rooms and Yahoo Instant Messenger installed. If I can prove that my security was not at fault, will that get me anywhere? NO. What's more frustrating is that since I couldn't find anything, I have no idea if I am safe RIGHT NOW. They're very quick to assume the problem is totally my fault, and I'm not convinced. Especially as more and more people contact me who have had similar problems.

Is there a virus out there stealing FTP passwords? Is there spyware going around that steals that information? What is is called? Where has it been sighted? How many people have been affected? What SPECIFICALLY should I be on the lookout for?

#3 - What more should they do? More awareness that this is a possibility might have been nice.

I was at the blogger event in July when Howard Lederer spoke about how much his company does to protect customers from being ripped off. I didn't hear him mention this possibility. I was laboring under the false assumption that if something like this happened, FTP would be there to protect me. I was wrong and I learned my lesson.

I'm certainly not saying that any other poker room would handle this any differently, or that another poker system is safer that FTP. I actually thought that FTP was different, somehow better than most places that would just say "you're screwed, we're sorry." I was DEAD WRONG. My bad.

Had I been more aware, I would have left much less money in my account. But FTP doesn't want the constant deposit/withdrawal process that might actually have kept my money safe, because that would affect their bottom line. But now I know better, and hopefully anyone that reads this knows better too.

I'm not blaming FTP for ripping me off. I'm not saying people shouldn't play at FTP. I'm just saying don't leave big piles of money there. Yes, that's a pain in the ass, but unless you want to take that risk, you should do it.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

The morons who sponsored the UIGEA were right. I still think the UIGEA was horribly wrong and will not do a single thing to address the situation. But in a way, this is exactly what they were talking about. Their attempt to fix it was lame and ridiculous, but things like this give them ammunition to enact these horrible laws.

I was operating under the fallacy that money kept in an account at someplace like Full Tilt Poker was safe. If something beyond my control happened to that money, I thought a respected site like Full Tilt Poker would do something to protect me and my funds.

I was wrong and the UIGEA folks were right. It is a totally unregulated industry that pretty much makes up its own rules on whether they want to protect your money or not. I am relegated to taking their word for the fact that my money was taken to the tables by some untraceable dirtbag and blown at the tables for absolutely no gain to him except the thrill of putting the screws to me. They've given me an IP address and a big text file of hand histories that show someone blowing my money to a few players over several hands.

There is no question that the player is not me. I played my final hands at the site, visited the Riverchasers tournament to chat with Al and Michael Craig for a few minutes, and the moment I logged off someone logged on from a completely different IP address and proceeded to ransack my bankroll.

Yet Full Tilt Poker, while not responsible for the disappearance of my money, certainly assisted in it's dispersal. There are no guarantees for your money. You are not putting it in a bank, you are not depositing it into a safe place. You are basically putting it in the hands of some foreign company, and hoping they have enough self-interest to protect your funds.

Again I remind you, do NOT keep your money on a poker site. It is not safe there, and if someone gets into your account you will not be protected in any way.

I'm still a bit shocked about how this ended. There was very little doubt in my mind that Full Tilt Poker would make this right. I have heard so many good things from people who have had positive experiences with Full Tilt Poker's support, I didn't think this would happen.

But it is absolutely true. Your money is not safe at Full Tilt Poker. Do not keep any money in your account there. If you want to play, deposit when you play and withdraw when you exit. If you have money on Full Tilt Poker right now, log on and withdraw it. NOW. If you use Neteller, there is no fee for this procedure and it is instantaneous. Do not keep your money at the site, it is not safe. It may cost them to do so many transfers, but as long as it doesn't cost you, it is the only way to guarantee the safety of your money.

Don't ask me what to do about tournament tokens. Those will always be at risk, unless you play them immediately after winning them. Luckily they are basically worthless to a thief, since they can't be transferred or redeemed for cash.

Fortunately for me I do not keep a large portion of my bankroll at any one site, but I do (did!) leave money at different poker sites to make it easier to just log on and play. This will be especially difficult for sites that hold your cash hostage while you work on a deposit bonus.

Security

They are claiming, without proof, that the security of my system has been compromised. I guess I can claim the same thing, that their security has been compromised. I have the same amount of proof.

I would like to see Full Tilt Poker do more to protect your money, should you decide to leave it at the site. Something simple like having the option to prevent "foreign" IP addresses from accessing your account. Just a simple check box that says "Only allow US IP addresses."

Update:

Full Tilt Poker support gave me the hand histories. The guy didn't play $.50/$1 No Limit, he played $2/$4 No Limit. The hand histories are strange because many of they don't give the names and amounts of all the players in the hands. The money was dumped in about 70 hands. The bulk of my money went to the following players.

hustlaaa4lifeHarriPotterJeffreyAlanpoly_baller

Here's an example of the hands, notice how it doesn't give info on all the seated players?

Upon review of your account, I have determined that your account waslogged in from a foreign IP address at approximately 21:53 ET.Furthermore, it appears the individual who accessed your account sat atthe real money tables and proceeded to lose $582.45 playing $0.5/$1 NoLimit.

Having said that, please realize that Full Tilt Poker can not be heldresponsible for any funds lost under these circumstances. We apologizethat this is the case, and there is nothing more we can about your lostfunds.

Not only are they doing nothing about the person who stole my money, they are doing nothing to help me find them. I have no IP address, no ISP, nothing. There are no details about the person who received the chip dumps. They won't give me hand histories to see for myself.

They are completely and totally useless, and their site cannot be trusted.

Since that's about the amount I collected from them in blog ads, I figure it's a wash. I would not feel safe ever depositing money there again. There is no spyware/keylogger on my computer. I have no idea how this happened, so I have no idea if it will happen again.

Monday, December 11, 2006

After reading on several blogs about what a profitable poker site Interpoker.com is, I thought I'd check it out and do a little site review.

My first impression is that it is pretty much like every other poker site, but just a little bit better. Interpoker.com has many of the most popular features that most of the successful poker sites have, but they seem to have improved almost every detail.

Take your deposit bonus. You can get one at just about every site out there, but Interpoker.com only requires a 5x clearance, rather than a 7x or even 10x clearance rates that are more common among the competition.

Interpoker.com also give all players a brand new deposit bonus every month, giving you a $100 bonus to work toward each month. Instead of random deposit bonus promotions that most poker sites have occasionally, you can count on Interpoker.com every month.

Like many sites, Interpoker.com has bad beat jackpots, but unlike the others, there is no jackpot drop added to the rake. The money for the jackpot prize pool isn't taken from the players, it's contributed by the site. They have back beat jackpots in Stud and Omaha too, not just Holdem.

Interpoker.com also has a very innovative "Get Paid to Play" system. Everyone that signs up with Interpoker.com is eligible for the Prop Player incentive promotion. If you are waiting for a game on a full table a message may pop up offering you a cash incentive to go to a particular table and start a game. Depending upon how many people there are in the poker room you could see the prop message several times a day. Interpoker.com will pay up to $30 per hour for any amount of time you play on that table.

If you feel the need for speed, Interpoker.com has special "Lightning Games" listed in the lobby. In Lightning Games the time to act is only 12 seconds instead of the normal 22 seconds. The games play much faster, but Lightning Games are only Limit games.

Interpoker.com also has leagues and promotions that change every month. There is a casino attached, with specialty games like Holdem Blackjack, which you have to see for yourself.

If you're looking for a new poker room with innovative promotions that really have the players in mind, give Interpoker.com a try.

Friday, December 08, 2006

I get a lot of search hits from people that are trying to remove the Party Poker Icon that appears in your toolbar after installing Party Poker. Other poker rooms do this as well, including Titan Poker, Bodog Poker, Absolute Poker and many others.

A lot of the searches hit me, but I don't really have instructions on how to do this, so I thought I would come up with something quick and dirty for those people who are desperate enough to take my advice. I've done this on my own computers and it works, but I don't guarantee you won't fuck your computer up if you do it wrong.

If you just want to remove the Icon from the toolbar so you don't have to look at it, the procedure is very easy. Just select "View" from the menu, select "Toolbars" and "Customize." You can then select the icons and click "Remove" to keep them from showing up in your Internet Explorer.

If you want to remove them from your system completely, it's a little more complicated. They are actually entries into your system registry, so you must edit this to remove them.

Start the registry editor by going to "Start" and typing "regedit" into the "Run" dialog and click "OK." Within the registry editor, expand the tree for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" then "SOFTWARE" then "Microsoft" then "Internet Explorer" then "Extensions." Within that tree there are several folders, and each one of them represents an icon added to your Internet Explorer Toolbar. Find the one with titles in it that read "Party Poker." Right click the folder (in the left part of the Editor Interface) and select "Delete."

Repeat for whatever icons you want removed. The next time you start Internet Explorer, those Icons will be gone.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Edit: I got ripped off at Full Tilt Poker, and support did nothing to help me. Here's how I discovered it.

I read about the new mixed games at Full Tilt online and was eager to logon when I got home and try them out. I picked out a nice HOSE game, attempted to sit, and I got a message that I didn't have enough in my account, the minimum I must have is $2.50. A very odd message since I had hundreds of dollars in my account.

I clicked the cashier button, and it told me that my account held $.03 and two tournament tokens.

What The Fuck?

Has my account been hacked? There are no account transfers in my history, so either someone gained access to my account and blew my bankroll, or there are some serious accounting errors going on over at Full Tilt Poker.

I sent an email to FTP support asking them what happened to my cash. I'll update when I hear any news. This should be interesting.

Update: I got ripped off, and Full Tilt Poker is doing nothing about the scam. If you play at Full Tilt Poker, do not keep any money there, it is not safe. Deposit when you play, and withdraw when you finish.

The federal government obviously feels, with legislation in effect like the UIGEA, that full grown adult Americans aren't responsible enough to decide what they can and cannot do with their own money.

So if they are going to stop people from gambling (in non-approved ways, of course) on the Internet, shouldn't they be stopping this?

Click picture to see the full con. (Normally I hate to link things like this, but I'm positive nobody that reads this will actually donate anything to this moron. Incidentally, doesn't the graphic at the top make you think they are HARVESTING SOULS! SOULS! SOULS!???)

Yes, Benny Hinn, universal scumbag evangelist, wants 6000 of his most faithful partners suckers to donate $1000 each so he can raise the six million dollars for a down payment on a FORTY MILLION DOLLAR LUXURY EXECUTIVE JET for himself.

This is not a joke or a hoax. This filthy con-man is trying to bilk people out of six million dollars so he can have his own personal jet to make it easier for him to fly around and con more people out of their money more efficiently.

If the federal government thinks it's appropriate to tell adults what they can and cannot spend their money on, this seems like an obvious thing to stop too, doesn't it? Anyone that donates to this obvious scam-artist is certainly not responsible enough to decide what they should be spending their money on, right? Federal government? Hello?

Grubby's Theme

Now you swear and kick and beg usThat youre not a gamblin manThen you find youre back in vegasWith a handle in your handYour black cards can make you moneySo you hide them when youre ableIn the land of milk and honeyYou must put them on the tableYou go back jack do it againWheel turnin round and roundYou go back jack do it again

I may not be going to Vegas (envy sucks!) but I am doing some traveling for the upcoming holidays so I thought I would get some reading material for the trip.

I got the pleasure of sitting next to Jay Greenspan at the last blogger event, and even though he was giving he helpful advice, it didn't stop me from pushing all my chips in the pot against a Royal Flush. I do appreciate his empathy when I showed him the second nut flush, while I'm pretty sure the rest of the table was thinking "moron!"

Everything about his book Hunting Fish seems like the perfect book for me. I love adventures, I love hearing about cultural differences, and I love hearing about someone taking huge pots off of fish. After talking with Jay and getting an idea of his sense of humor, I'm laying odds that this book will definitely entertain me.

I tuned into Full Tilt too late to play in the Riverchasers Tournament last night. There were 98 Entries, (nobody brings em in like Al) including Mr. Craig himself. I dropped in for a few minutes and said hello, and he was entertaining the whole table with his stories, like the one about his chance to steal Clonie Gowan's underwear.

Ask him about it next time you see him at Full Tilt, he's there all the time!